In the second of three extracts from the 3rd edition of Magazine Editing, published by Routledge, I talk about dealing with the large amount of information that magazine editors receive. 

Managing information overload

A magazine editor now has little problem finding information on a range of topics. It is likely that you will have subscribed to email newsletters, RSS feeds, Facebook groups and pages, YouTube channels and various other sources of news and information both in your field and on journalistic or management topics.

There tend to be two fears driving journalists’ information consumption: the fear that you will miss out on something because you’re not following the right sources; and the fear that you’ll miss out on something because you’re following too many sources. This leads to two broad approaches: people who follow everything of any interest (‘follow, then filter’); and people who are very strict about the number of sources of information they follow (‘filter, then follow’).

A good analogy to use here is of streams versus ponds. A pond is manageable, but predictable. A stream is different every time you step in it, but you can miss things.

As an editor you are in the business of variety: you need to be exposed to a range of different pieces of information, and cannot afford to be caught out. A good strategy for managing your information feeds then, is to follow a wide variety of sources, but to add filters to ensure you don’t miss all the best stuff.

If you are using an RSS reader one way to do this is to have specific folders for your ‘must-read’ feeds. Andrew Dubber, a music industries academic and author of the New Music Strategies blog, recommends choosing 10 subjects in your area, and choosing five ‘must-read’ feeds for each, for example.

For email newsletters and other email updates you can adopt a similar strategy: must-reads go into your Inbox; others are filtered into subfolders to be read if you have time.

To create a folder in Google Reader, add a new feed (or select an existing one) and under the heading click on Feed Settings… – then scroll to the bottom and click on New Folder… – this will also add the feed to that folder.

If you are following hundreds or thousands of people on Twitter, use Twitter lists to split them into manageable channels: ‘People I know’; ‘journalism’; ‘industry’; and so on. To add someone to a list on Twitter, visit their profile page and click on the list button, which will be around the same area as the ‘Follow’ button.

You can also use websites such as Paper.li to send you a daily email ‘newspaper’ of the most popular links shared by a particular list of friends every day, so you don’t miss out on the most interesting stories.

Social bookmarking: creating an archive and publishing at the same time

Social bookmarking tools like Delicious, Digg and Diigo can also be useful in managing web-based resources that you don’t have time to read or think might come in useful later. Bookmarking them essentially ‘files’ each webpage so you can access them quickly when you need them (you do this by giving each page a series of relevant tags, e.g. ‘dieting’, ‘research’, ‘UK’, ‘Jane Jones’).

They also include a raft of other useful features, such as RSS feeds (allowing you to automatically publish selected items to a website, blog, or Twitter or Facebook account), and the ability to see who else has bookmarked the same pages (and what else they have bookmarked, which is likely to be relevant to your interests).

Check the site’s Help or FAQ pages to find out how to use them effectively. Typically this will involve adding a button to your browser’s Links bar (under the web address box) by dragging a link (called ‘Bookmark on Delicious’ or similar) from the relevant page of the site (look for ‘bookmarklets’).

Then, whenever you come across a page you want to bookmark, click on that button. A new window will appear with the name and address of the webpage, and space for you to add comments (a typical tactic is to paste a key quote from the page here), and tags.

Useful things to add as tags include anything that will help you find this later, such as any organisations, locations or people that are mentioned, the author or publisher, and what sort of information is included, such as ‘report’, ‘statistics’, ‘research’, ‘casestudy’ and so on.

If installing a button on your browser is too complicated or impractical many of these services also allow you to bookmark a page by sending the URL to a specific email address. Alternatively, you can just copy the URL and log on to the bookmarking site to bookmark it.

Some bookmarking services double up as blogging sites: Tumblr and Stumbleupon are just two. The process is the same as described above, but these services are more intuitively connected with other services such as Twitter and Facebook, so that bookmarked pages are also automatically published on those services too. With one click your research not only forms a useful archive but also becomes an act of publishing and distribution.

Every so often you might want to have a clear out: try diverting mailings and feeds to a folder for a week without looking at them. After seven days, ask which ones, if any, you have missed. You might benefit from unsubscribing and cutting down some information clutter. In general, it may be useful to have background information, but it all occupies your time. Treat such things as you would anything sent to you on paper. If you need it, and it is likely to be difficult to find again, file it or bookmark it. If not, bin it. After a while, you’ll find it gets easier.

Do you have any other techniques for dealing with information overload?

Recently my long love affair with Bloglines has been hitting the rocks. I’ve been seeing another RSS reader. Yes, it’s Google Reader.

It started on the bus to work. You see, the mobile version of Bloglines doesn’t do it for me. My ‘morning paper’, now, is to scroll through the headlines from the dozens of blogs I subscribe to – in Google Reader mobile. If it’s something I might want to return to later, I ‘star’ it. If the blog post supports it, I might even bookmark it on del.icio.us.

When I get into work one of my browser homepages is Google Reader – I follow up on any starred items.

But one RSS reader is not enough. My second homepage is Bloglines.

Whereas Google Reader simply gives me a lucky dip of recent posts from the two hundred-plus feeds I subscribe to, Bloglines is organised: I only look at my top five blogs in ten categories: UK online journalism blogs, US OJ blogs, technology news, media news, and so on. You could call it my ‘local’ newspaper.

(note: That top-5-in-10 categories tip came from colleague Andrew Dubber, music industry blogger and co-founder of 5alist.com, where, not coincidentally, you can create, share and comment on top five lists. Cute idea.)

As if that isn’t enough, I have a third RSS reader: TailRank. You can import your feeds into TailRank and set it to only display the posts that have 10 or more incoming links. That’s my Sunday newspaper: the quality I’ve missed during the week.

So. Three RSS readers – one general, one local, and one quality. How about you? Which ones do you use – and how do you use them?

Andrew Dubber, who runs the music industry/new media blog New Music Strategies, has some cute ideas for monetising what has become more than a hobby, “without getting in the way of the content, and without jeopardising the integrity of the blog.” The twist: he’s giving a commission to his readers…

“I’m not just going to sit and wait for the advertisers to come to me. I’m going to take what I think is probably the unprecedented step of offering commission on sales to the readers of my blog.

“That’s right — you can sell advertising for me, and I’ll pay you a cut.

“When I worked in radio, the commission on advertising was 15% of the ticket price. Double that seems more fair, don’t you think? If you sell any of these advertising packages, I’ll give you 30% commission as an independent sales contractor.

“Better yet, to get things kickstarted, if you sell December, I’ll make it 50%. Yep – you get half.”

This is what they have to sell:

1. Sidebar ads. “I will only accept advertising that I absolutely approve of, and will certainly never take your cash if I don’t like what you are pushing. While the money would be nice, my reputation is my business, and I will not flog crap.”
2. RSS feed ads: at less than half price to independent artists (but two will be listed. Again: “I will only accept messages that I personally approve. The standard will be quite high, but if your message is of genuine use and interest to my audience, and meets certain ethical criteria, then I’m happy for it to be attached to the bottom of my posts.”
3. Sponsored blog post – at only £40 for 300-500 words: “Here’s the catch: I’ll make it perfectly clear that it’s a sponsored post, and I will be entirely honest. But you get the power of veto. If I don’t like your service or product, I will give you the option to have me not publish the blog post, or post as is. If you decide against it, you won’t have to pay me.”

Yesterday he told me: “it’s working”.

PS: His first sponsored post is already online.